“The men take up the packs, and this is what happens: They walk to the base of the cliff, with a stout alpenstock in hand. They start to climb a narrow foot-trail that goes up, up, up. The rock and earth are gray. The packers and packs have disappeared. There is nothing but the gray wall of rock and earth. But stop! Look more closely. The eye catches movement. The mountain is alive. See! They are going against the sky! They are human beings, but never did men look so small.” ~Tappan Adney for Harpers Weekly, 1897
When gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896 an intrepid young outdoorsman, well experienced in a variety of conditions, set out for the north almost immediately. Arriving a year later, in 1897, Tappan Adney was a writer for Harper’s Weekly, the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S., and he was already an accomplished artist, illustrator, writer, and photographer.
Edwin Tappan Adney was born in Athens, Ohio, in 1868, the oldest child of a highly educated academic family. His first major work included over 100 illustrations for The Handbook of the Birds of Eastern North America, a field guide for birders that remained popular in the U.S. and Canada into the 1920s. His keen interest in traditional birch bark canoes is credited with saving them from extinction. He devoted his life to the study of canoes, and his work in the field was widely respected. In 1964 his research papers, photographs and illustrations were published by the Smithsonian under the title The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. The book is available to read online at the Internet Archive.
Adney’s first-person book chronicling the Canadian gold rush, The Klondike Stampede, was published in 1900 and is considered the definitive primary-source record of the event, including over 150 photographs and drawings. His descriptions are often harsh and riveting:
“Every man we meet tells of the trials of the trail. Anxious and weary are they. I saw one half-way up a hill asleep on his pack, with his closed eyes towards the sky and the rain pattering on his face, which was as pale as death. It gave me a start, until I noticed his deep breathing. A little way on three horses lie dead, two of them half buried in the black quagmire, and the horses step over their bodies, without a look, and painfully struggle on. . . . No one knows how many people there are. We guess five thousand—there may be more—and two thousand head of horses. . . .A steamer arrives and empties several hundred people and tons of goods into the mouth of the trail, and the trail absorbs them as a sponge drinks up water. They are lost amid the gulches and trees." —Tappan Adney, journalist "The Klondike Stampede," 1900
After the gold rush Adney moved to Canada and became a naturalized citizen, pursuing his art as a successful career. He passed away in 1950 and is buried in New Brunswick with his wife.